Sufferings of Middle East Christians Are A Holocaust

Sufferings  Of  Middle  East  Christians  Are  A  Holocaust   

 A  Review  Of

 Andreas Knapp The Last Christians (Plough Publishing, 2017)

                                      240 pp   $18.00   ISBN: 978-0-87486-062-7

 Translator:  Sharon Howe

 Reviewer:  Forrest W. Schultz

     The author of this book not only shares with us his first-hand accounts of the horrific sufferings of today’s Christians in the Middle East, he also provides us with this interpretation of their significance:  like those in the genocide of the Armenians, they constitute a Holocaust.  AND, not only that, but he also informs us that the term Holocaust was applied by an American missionary, Corinna Shattuck, to the Armenian genocide.  (The term Holocaust was first used to designate the Nazi extermination of the Jews in 1955.)  Little more is said by Knapp about Shattuck, so I went to the Armenian Genocide Museum site http://www.genocide-museum.am/eng/Corinna-Shattuck-eng.php  which refers to her as “CORINNA SHATTUCK. THE ARMENIANS LIFE-SAVING AMERICAN” which includes this statement:  The result of her heroic efforts was that she … saved the life of the 240 Armenians (60 men and the rest women and children) in the house allocated to her, risking her own live during the massacres at Urfa in 1895..  It also informs us that she served under the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.

     Shattuck’s heroism is reminiscent of one of my favorite heroes, the Dutch lady Corrie Ten Boom, who hid Jews in her house during World War II.   I was disappointed that the author did not include this information in his book.

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     Knapp’s book contains helpful information on the history of Islam, especially as it interacts with the history of the Eastern Christians.  There is also discussion of the Eastern Christian attitude toward persecution, which appears to be a continuation of the same attitude found in the first century.  To sum it up, the material provided in this book is very moving as well as very thought-provoking and is very well written.  There are also excellent photographs.  One defect is that there are no footnotes, which should have been provided for many of the items in the text.

Information on the publisher is available at www.plough.com. 

December 22, 2017

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